Blair Kamin, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, has had a tempestuous relationship with Donald Trump for years. As a developer working in Chicago, Trump's buildings have been critiqued by Kamin, and as often happens when Trump is criticized, he does not shy away... View full entry »

The aptly named "McMansionhell" tumblr has taken the time to carefully note just what makes a McMansion an ugly, terrible, no good architectural atrocity. Skipping over frothy diatribe and going straight into meticulous point by point dissection, the tumblr notes that McMansions fail in four key... View full entry »

David Scheer penned his first essay for Archinect, a review of a new federal courthouse in Salt Lake City, designed by Thomas Phifer & Partners. His conclusion? "As a piece of construction, it is beautifully detailed and executed—a virtuosic performance of modern building technology. It... View full entry »

At the begining of Apri, Nicholas Korody published 'The internship test or: why even become an architect at all?' For Jeremy Miller the takeway was "am clearly paying my intern too much, that must be why I am not a successful famous Architect...But Seriously, I can sort of see an unpaid... View full entry »

He seems hungry for a serious discussion on everything from the refugee crisis – “a really bad combination of European arrogance and North African ignorance” – to the state of contemporary architecture – “the vast majority of architects are just filling up our society with trash” – and has a habit of speaking about his art in overwhelmingly conceptual terms. “Are we consumers of space?” he asks himself at one point. “Or are we in fact producers of space?”
— telegraph.co.uk

Related stories in the Archinect news:Olafur Eliasson to storm VersaillesOlafur Eliasson wins a Crystal Award for "improving the state of the world"Olafur Eliasson opens ship-themed pedestrian bridge in Copenhagenand in a way: Frank Gehry gives the crowd a piece of his mind (and his middle finger) View full entry »

Julia Ingalls penned a review of the "recently redesigned Petersen Museum". Responding to her criticism Seth Terry asked "has the public really been cheated?...I find it telling that the members of the public quoted in the article itself not only like the museum but find that it fills the role... View full entry »

What is the role of creative exploration in architecture? From the L.A. Times to The New Republic, this question is very much on critical minds. In a piece entitled "How to Make Architecture Human," Anna Wiener reviews Witold Rybczynski's latest collection of essays, Mysteries of the Mall, which... View full entry »

The published renderings that accompanied the announcement were not terribly reassuring, as they depicted a very long curved terminal with gangly tentacles raised over plane taxiways that hinted at torsos of praying mantises: an awkward rather than a graceful vault.
— 6sqft.com

Related: A new LaGuardia is the "airport that New York deserves", says Gov. Cuomo View full entry »

Taken out of its high-profile context, the BIG design for Two World Trade Center initially appears to be a graduate school placeholder: here are the initial seven blocks of program, with a light dusting of foliage on the exposed step-backs. The internet's critical reaction to the renderings... View full entry »

Julia Ingalls spoke on the phone with Paul Goldberger about the relevance of criticism in the social media age. davvid was at least somewhat pleased "Its about time we start talking about this stuff. I'm not convinced that Goldberger has a good handle on it, but at least he's trying". Later... View full entry »

The review is about speculation as much as evaluation. Critics are not enemies, and they don’t know everything. Admitting a level of uncertainty that necessarily occurs within design education completely changes how one imagines the review moment.
— sectioncut.com

Senior editor Orhan Ayyüce published the first in a series of mini-interviews for a new feature Touching Base: In which he profiled Volkan Alkanoglu, founding principal of Volkan Alkanoglu | DESIGN LLC. It was a reminder for Donna Sink of how small the world is, as her "husband's company... View full entry »

What is 'serious criticism' in architecture? This is a vital topic, since architecture critics often shape public opinion as much as architects themselves do, if not more so.
— Huffington Post

Derived from John Ruskin's 1849 essay "The Seven Lamps of Architecture", architect Lance Hosey compiled a list of comments from the small group of architecture writers pictured above about what they believe are the defining characteristics of good architectural criticism and its role in today's... View full entry »

The architect, who implicitly exempted himself from that 98%, might have been arrogant, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right.

[...] many if not most buildings are the work of contractors, not architects, and that this has been and will likely always be the case. Unfortunately, architectural education and criticism tends to focus on important buildings at the expense of the common and ordinary.
— forbes.com

“It’s not so bad,” offered an architect who has a window facing the building.

Alas, it is.

Like the corporate campus and plaza it shares, 1 World Trade speaks volumes about political opportunism, outmoded thinking and upside-down urban priorities. It’s what happens when a commercial developer is pretty much handed the keys to the castle.
— The New York Times